Electronics

[nomless]

I also like Win 8.1. I came to it from XP at home, Win 7 at work. When I got a new laptop with Win 8.1, I decided to learn how to use it as it was intended, rather than trying to make it act/look/perform like an earlier version. I got a couple of Win 8 books to help me over the rough spots, and within a couple of days, I was comfortable with Win 8. I find it much easier to use than previous versions. I love it. I was glad I got a touch screen laptop. Now, I use the mouse more than touching, but initially the touch option made things a lot easier.

[KJPA]

On 10/1/2014 ThinkOutsideTheBox said:

I LOVED, and I mean really loved, Windows XP for many years. Once I started school for Network Security, I began working with Vista, and boy did I curse out that OS at least thirty times per day. However, I began to be very fond of Vista, in the way people become fond of the runts of puppy and kitten litters. Moved on to Windows 7...loved it in theory....HATED, and still HATE it in practice. Despite what everyone says about loving Windows 7, I have never seen a Microsoft OS screw itself up so often after MS updates...EVER! When Windows 8 came out, I did a lot of reading about improvements that were made "under the hood" so to speak, and I was impressed. I tried out Windows 8, and when it ran with zero hiccups on two ancient laptops, and faster than any previous OS, I fell in love. When Windows 8.1 rolled out, I hopped on up to that, and found the minor improvements in that to my liking as well.

Here is the best part...for anyone who cannot make their way in Windows 8, there is a beautiful little secret. Press the Windows button on your keyboard, along with the letter C key. The Charms bar will pop up on the side of the screen. Select the magnifying glass symbol to open search. Then, simply type in whatever you need to find or do. Try it out...it is amazing. I used to despise the search function on all other Windows versions. It was slow and clunky. Windows 8/8.1 search is a thing of beauty!

And, I really like both the tiles and the regular desktop. I used Start8 for a while to return the start button and program menu, but found that with Windows 8.1, finding programs from the Start screen (the tiles) is easy. Windows 8.1 has a little down arrow showing at the bottom left of the screen. You just click on that, and it lists all the programs in a way that is similar to the old start/programs listing. I love it!

ThinkOutsideTheBox, I agree with most of what you say but the search feature is even easier than you describe! Just press the Windows key and forget the charms bar altogether! Start typing at the "Tiles" screen. You don't need to move your cursor to a "search field" or anything. Just start typing and Windows opens the search field for you and starts populating. I think it's a thing of beauty!!

As to everyone's problems with Vista, the way I understand it Vista and Windows 7 are almost the exact same thing. My engineer friends tell me the problem with Vista is that it took a lot of RAM and most PCs only had 1-2GB when Vista was released. That wasn't enough to run Vista and the other programs we all use so it often "had problems." By the time MS released Windows 7 most PCs had at least 3GB and 7 ran fine. Vista would run fine on 3GB too. Unfortunately the masses don't understand all that so they blame Vista.

I think that's one big reason why Apple fans love Macs. The hardware and software are made to run together. Apple doesn't have to worry that some other manufacturer will build hardware that isn't capable of running the Mac OS. Microsoft can't control that I guess.